Jonathan Pershing

Jonathan Pershing is the program director for environment at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, where he leads a team focused on global climate change and a separate portfolio supporting conservation in the North American West. Jonathan was Hewlett’s Environment Program director from 2017-2021, and after serving as senior advisor to Special Presidential Envoy John Kerry during 2021-2022, returned to lead the program in 2022. He has significant public sector experience as the special envoy for climate change at the U.S. Department of State during the Obama Administration; the senior climate advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Energy; and principal deputy director of the Office of Energy Policy and Systems Analysis at the Department of Energy. Jonathan also directed the climate, energy, and pollution program at the World Resources Institute; led the environment division at the International Energy Agency in Paris; and spent nearly a decade as the science advisor and deputy director of the State Department’s Office of Global Change. He has written and lectured extensively on climate change, including serving as a lead author and review editor for the IPCC. He has a Ph.D. in Geology and Geophysics from the University of Minnesota.